Sunday, August 16, 2009

Sunday sermon....

I loved the 'Shobhaa chi Phodni' reference in the Comments space. I love tadkas - and can give you countless tadka recipes. But today has been a particularly mellow sunday. I have barely moved off the bed ( bliss!!) and have just finished watching an old favourite - Francois Truffaut's 'Jules et Jim' - that classic and complex Jeanne Moreau movie about a beautiful but doomed menage a trois. My husband has been reading aloud passages from Amartya Sen's new book on Justice, and generally raving over the economist-philosopher - it also helps that the brilliant professor is Bong! Between all these cerebral activities, I have neglected food. Though after an inspired dinner at Indigo last night, I should go on a starvation dinner for a month or two. Arundhati , who landed in New York obviously didn't waste a single moment and went straight to Bagatelle last night. She and her gal pals threw in the Pink Elephant as well while they were at it. She reports that she didn't have a problem getting through U.S. Immigration, unlike our Bollywood Badshah ( I'll post my take on that episode tomorrow). ******************************Swine 'Flu? Does anybody remember Bird 'Flu? Mad Cow Disease? Saars? Our politicians are the real swines. This over reaction to the 'epidemic' is to distract our attention from other more serious issues. Ditto for the drought alarm bells. These are nothing but diversionary tactics. More people die of TB in India than Swine 'Flu. Does anybody bother? Add Malaria and Cholera, Dysentry and Malnutrtion to the long list and you get the grim picture. Prices of sugar and other essentials are spiralling out of control. Blame it on the 'bad monsoon'. Famine, as Dr. Amartya Sen famously pointed out in his earlier book, is man made. It is never about not having sufficient food in stock, it is more about not reaching available food to the people who most need it, due to poor infrastructure and the lack of a political will. **************************About that picture - I shot it in Prague at a gigantic cafe on the ground floor of the historic Municipal House. The chandelier is pure Art Nouveau, and I fell in love with it. There was a 3 piece Jazz ensemble playing Brubeck, and I was transported to another, far more romantic era.Aaah.... for another chilled out sunday like this one. No 'phodni'.... but delicious nevertheless.

Every year 20 million acres of rain forests are destroyed... the road towards vileparle station which housed some big ageless trees, will now have a flyover...

Swine Flu and other diseases is not natures response to man (un)kind. Do we deserve this? YES! we were mum when we saw the trees being axed, we were silent spectators when goons like salman and others went on a black buck killing spree... We need to go back to our school text books and refer to "BioGeo Chemical cycle"... Depletion of forests and cutting of trees will just lead to more catastrophic events. Swine Flu, Climate Change and Even Worse. The worst has yet not visited us. Swine flu is just a passe. Each one of we silent spectators, are responsible for the death of the many affected.

This perhaps is the best time for Citizen Action. The best time when the BMC could start an anti spitting campaign.

Regarding the blown up awareness for Swine Flu - i do agree with @theselfloveproject ... swine flu is dangerous and is communicable. But i seriously feel the closure of theaters and educational institutes is not an answer... As i said above, tragedy is the best time to create awareness on allied issues and causal factors. But We missed it...

Anyways what difference will a week of shutdown make.. I feel the shutdown had more to do with some terror threat or something, given our independence day that fell during the period... So they shut down under the pretext of swine flu??

the drought which is staring us right across is much more alarming than swine flu.....i dont wann sound over confident care must be taken so as to prevent this frm becoming a epidemic....things are getting expensive......all the way......kuch karna apdega....electirc bills hav hit the sky.....

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